Many of you have noticed that several articles appearing in the Journal make reference to additional supplementary materials that are available from JCE Online. This is one of the services that JCE Online provides to Journal subscribers. As our authors and reviewers become aware of this service, we believe that even more articles will have online supplementary materials. The Journal's new policy concerning laboratory experiments makes extensive use of this service to provide all of the information necessary to implement the experiment, which was often impossible in the past because of the cost of printing such information.

In addition to laboratory experiments, such materials can go a long way in helping to implement the ideas discussed in other types of articles. Currently, supplementary materials range from student assignments, handouts, worksheets, and exercises, to data sheets and supporting statistics, to equipment construction guide and figures, to utility software, source code, and video. We think you will agree that having access to such materials will make implementing the ideas put forth in the Journal much easier.

Which Articles Have Online Supplements?

Articles that have online supplementary materials are marked with a W in the Table of Contents and at the top of the article near the title. There is usually some mention of the contents of the supplement in the text of the article. As an example, see the article on page 502 of this issue, where the authors have made available the software they used.

Where Do I Find the Supplements?

The easiest way to locate supplementary materials at JCE Online is to go to the online abstract for the article. The URL or Internet address of the online abstract of the article is printed as a footnote in the article. You can type this address into the location field of our browser to go immediately
to the article. Of course, you can always choose JCE Online from your list of bookmarks (you have bookmarked it, haven't you?) and from the home page, select Journal and then either Current Issue or Past Issues. If it is a past issue you are looking for, you must select the year and then the month to get to the issue's online Table of Contents. Select the link to the article in the Table of Contents and you will get to its abstract.

On the abstract page there is a "Journal Supplement" button in the navigation side bar (see figure) that links to the page describing the supplement. On this page are other buttons in the sidebar that download the files containing the materials.

One common misconception of users looking for software supplements is that these are available from the Software link on the JCE Online home page. That is the link to JCE Software, the division of the Journal that publishes in the electronic medium. The supplemental software cited in the Journal is not published by JCE Software, where all software has undergone review.

I Found a Supplement, Now What?

Most of the supplementary materials are made available as compressed files: .ZIP files for Windows users and .SIT files for Mac OS users. Current versions of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer include utilities that automatically decompress the files when downloaded. When appropriate, .PDF files that can be viewed using Adobe Acrobat Reader are provided.

Once decompressed, the files are in the file formats as provided by the author. It may be that you do not possess an application that can read such files. We hope that most of those interested in these materials will have access to the same applications that the author used to prepare the materials. JCE Online does not have the resources to provide file translation. If you find that this is a problem, we suggest that you contact the author to see if she or he can provide you with a compatible version.

A Word of Caution

Supplementary materials made available at JCE Online are provided as is. They have been reviewed, but have not been edited by the Journal staff. We recommend that you carefully look over the materials provided before using them in your classroom.

Next Month, JCE Internet

As I write this, we have just received our first review submitted under the Open Review policy of JCE Internet (see http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEWWW/Authors/OpenReview.html for more information). By submitting your review you can have an impact on the materials published by JCE Internet. If you have ever thought "If only this author had...", now is your chance. The papers currently in Open Review are available at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEWWW/InReview/index.html . We welcome your input. Next month, we will feature in this column the JCE Internet area of JCE Online.

Footnote

A list of all articles that have supplementary materials online is available at

http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Plus/JCEExtras/index.html